Cody Ogden
- A coder from Minneapolis has created a self-styled "graveyard" website, which documents every product Google has ever killed off.
- Cody Ogden’s site lists 150 now-defunct products, from services and apps such as Google+ and Google Currents, to hardware like Revolv.
- The website has gained attention as Google prepares to shut down its Inbox app next month.
As Google prepares to shut down its Inbox email app to focus on Gmail, an avid coder has created a website listing all the products Google has ditched over the years.
The site — which is called "Killed By Google" and describes itself as "the Google graveyard and cemetery" — is the brainchild of Minneapolis-based coder Cody Ogden.
It was set up last year, around the time Google announced the closure of Inbox. With the Inbox service finally closing its doors next month, Killed By Google is suddenly gaining attention.
It exhibits Google’s history as a company that moves quickly and ditches things that aren’t working. For every product Google has succeeded with, many others have failed, something the site puts into stark perspective.
Some 150 products feature on the list, 127 of which are (or were) services. These include Pie, Google’s short-lived answer to Slack; Google Compare, a price comparison service; and Google Flu Trends, which attempted to make accurate predictions about flu activity.
The other 23 products comprise a mix of hardware and apps, such as Allo, an instant messaging app, which shut down earlier this month.
Read more: Google is rolling out ‘dynamic emails’ to make Gmail more useful and interactive
Although the website lists Google Glass as dead, a specialized version of Glass, called the Enterprise Edition, does remain on sale to businesses whose workers operate in fast-moving, high-risk environments, such as factories.
The original, consumer version of Google Glass was arguably a victim of its own hype, with Google choosing to tease it at a series of roadshows across the US. It was also dogged by privacy and security concerns before and during its two-year production span.
Take a look at Killed By Google here.
See Also:
- How to permanently delete your Google account (and save your data)
- One crucial detail was missing from Google’s huge gaming announcement: games
- How to clear the cache on a Google Chrome browser to make it run more efficiently
Source: Business Insider – cwood@businessinsider.com (Charlie Wood)